Influence

A few evenings ago, we dropped by an English-themed restaurant for dinner. The walls were covered with banners of great Liverpool football squads, a hunting horn hung from the ceiling, and the men's room featured posters announcing upcoming concerts. And the joint was named Penny Lane.

In short, we were in the realm of Beatles hagiography - and, in fact, images of the Fab Four filled cabinets throughout the space. So we spent a few moments explaining the Beatles to Cleo; as I've mentioned, she's heard 'Yellow Submarine,' but the immense arc of their career is generally unknown to her.

But how, exactly, to explain the importance of that career? It's not enough, surely, to point to the kitschy steins that featured the faces of John and George and to say, 'They were huge!' Might there be some more objective way of quantifying influence?

Well. The very next day, I was looking at the back page of The Atlantic, which asked a panel of musicians and musical historians to offer their nominees for the most influential song of all time. And, of the dozen or so responses, not a single tune named was by the Beatles. Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' was, interestingly, the only tune to get multiple nominations; otherwise, the list implied little unanimity, as it featured an early aria, some archaic blues songs, Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' and 'Amazing Grace.'

In short, an interesting a rather diverse list. But how, again, are we to characterize influence? Surely David's psalms have exerted an immense influence on the history of religious and literary thought - and yet they didn't get a single vote. Of course, that's part of the point of such surveys: to kindle debate and discussion. Maybe, though, we could go a step further here, and conclude that the very diversity of the responses suggests that influence - musical or otherwise - really can't be easily isolated. How would we weigh, after all, the fact that the Beatles have inspired a Richmond-based restaurant against, say, that diffuse force that an anthem such as 'We Shall Overcome' emanated in the 1960s? And, similarly, how can I even be sure that Cleo will recall her visit to the restaurant, or my brief parental soliloquy on the Fab Four?

Influence, it seems, is diffuse and contingent. Our lives, happily, are the outcomes of millions of small forces, instead of one blunt push. And trying to average those forces, to chart a common vector, may make for good copy, but inevitably simplifies things.

So play, on Penny Lane. We' enjoyed our fish and chips - but we also enjoyed the Journey and the Duran Duran that play, for reasons that weren't entirely clear, from your sound system.